Tag: business model innovation

News is full of cool technologies like drones, blockchains or autonomous cars and their disruptive character. Traditional firms have switched to innovation mode and have now cool digital transformation units to use these new technologies. Everybody is happy. Great, isn’t it?Or wait? Can this really work that easy?

I just had a project with a company that has set up an innovation unit to push innovation. They have great people who are very salient with all the tools we use today in holistic innovation management like Design Thinking, Scrum or Lean Startups.

However, when management wanted to use the 3 horizon framework, originally from McKinsey but later further developed by Paul Hobcraft, to map their innovation projects on the 3 horizon matrix, we had problems to rank the projects to the 3 horizons.

The entrepreneurial side: The missing side of innovation

The reason was simple. The focus of the projects was on technology and not on customer’s side of innovation or on the business model. Somehow, it seems that the project managers were happy to have installed the new fancy technology but have forgotten the entrepreneurial side of innovation.

It is important to remember what Michael Schrage has said to innovation:

Innovation is not what you innovators do… It is what customers and clients adopt.

Not only the customer side was missing but also the side how they wanted to use the technology in their business. The following illustration shows the relationship between technology and value creation.

The business model creates the value, not directly the technology*

How could that have happened in a company that has the tools and innovation managers that know how to apply the tools?

Let’s take a look at a traditional organization, the people there and their ability to execute business model innovations.

The Strategists?

Officially, the strategy guys take the big picture view on a firm. But most of strategists are very detached from the real business and particularly customers. They talk about markets, read Gartner technology forecasts and predict the future by analyzing the past, but most of them have never met a customer in person and have never programmed or have developed a product that is later sold. Most have a background in analytics and large consulting companies.

They are very detached from business but think they know where business should be moving to.

Normally, we do not use the blog for announcements, however we have two good news that we want to share with you. First, a workbook for startups was just released and second, we have teamed up with Orange Hills to form fluidminds Australia.

New Book on “Starting with the Right Business Model”

The book “Das Richtige gründen: Werkzeugkasten für Unternehmer” or “Starting the Right stuff: Toolbox for entrepreneurs” is just being released. It’s a workbook with which entrepreneurs can develop from an idea a business model that works or as we say: “Das Richtige” or “The Right Stuff”.

With the book entrepreneurs can, based on customer & market insights, design the four elements of a business model:

Besides the building blocks, we give guidance how to start the process to find the right thing. Good business model design starts with customer & market insights and testing early the basic assumption. We believe that not the Minimal Viable Product (MVP) should be tested but the Minimal Viable Business Model (MVBM) where you test the value proposition, your offer and the distribution & communication channels before going full speed ahead.

The book is written in witty, precise and almost humorous language and designed to inspire people to get out of their comfort zone. We want to inspire big thinking, at the same time we force entrepreneurs to be precise in what they want to start with. Any great vision starts with something relevant customers want and buy.

In the book, we unveil the secrets of the business models of German and Swiss companies that are global, but often hidden champions. In my humble opinion we focus too much on American multinationals or Internet companies when writing case studies on interesting business model innovators. We forget that in economically successful countries like Germany or Switzerland, we have many Mittelstand companies or mid-sized family owned businesses that are suppliers of core technology to the world but not known in the world. So if you want to learn about German and Swiss powerhouses, you have to learn German to read the book or find a publisher that is willing to translate the book ;-).

The book was produced together with Thomas Meyer, a well known Swiss author, and Fritz Gottschalk, a doyen of Swiss graphic design (Remember the font Helvetica or Frutiger? All fonts from Swiss designers). Two of our core values, we shared in the team, were beauty and reduction to the essentials. If we succeed is up the judgment of our readers.

Wolfsburg AG, the innovation agency of Volkswagen AG and the city of Wolfsburg, sponsored our team. We are very grateful for their support.

So far, the book is available only in German, but we are open to other languages. You can buy the book in any German bookstore, Amazon.de or Amazon.com. More information on my German Blog Das-Richtige-gruenden.de.

My company, fluidminds Inc., joined forces in Australia with Norbert Haehnel and Orange Hills. The result is our joined company fluidminds Pty Ltd. based in Sydney. Norbert is a seasoned manager in the high-tech industry who wants to bring business model innovation to Australia.

Australia is an interesting turf for business model innovation since the country is still heavily depended on the export of raw material to the rest of the world. Business Model Innovation can and will help Australia to be less depended Continue reading Book on Business Model Innovation

Recently, I had an intensive discussion with David Siegel who just moved to Zurich. His big idea is business agility and he is so right since the missing part in business model innovation is the process moving from your current business model to a better future. He calls it business agility. We at fluidminds use Rethinking business and Entrepreneurial Design for the process.

Regardless what wording we use, what we need is a process that helps companies to develop innovative business models that customers, employees and the owners love.

Today, two processes exit in companies that could be used: the innovation process and the strategic planning process. The names of the processes suggest that they could be useful, however in reality the opposite is the case.

Why? They lack agility and experiments. Both processes have the hidden assumption that with more and better planning you can anticipate the future. Both are focused on existing products and markets. These tacit assumptions might be right for a world of sustaining innovations, in a world of more-of-the-same.

But, and that is a BIG BUT, not in a world which is radically changing. Business model innovations have a disruptive character and focus on the whole business model. There is a need for business model innovations in any industry due to the Internet, the demand for clean energy, globalization, and due to the rise of Asia.

Therefore, almost every firm needs a different approach to innovation and strategy.

The future is not about prediction but about shaping the future with agile experimentation on what works and what does not work

’Our industry is unique and should not be compared with other industries!’ This is a common phrase I have heard countless times throughout my consulting career. But is it true?

Strangely enough the most successful companies become prosperous not by excluding comparisons, but by leveraging other industries success factors and applying them in a new context. Many other companies that innovated within the boundaries of their current industry logic often left the stage early. When looking at new business models it is often clear that they have not been developed from scratch. Many models that have changed an industry are merely refurbished versions of another model by another industry.

Business Model Innovation is about combining successful models from various industries as well as finding completely new ways of doing things.

Re-imagine your organisation with a different leader

When you design your future business model you need to find ways to overcome the current thinking patterns or dominant logic of your industry. Famous leaders are often responsible for defining a new way of thinking in their industry. How would Rupert Murdoch or Frank Lowry run your business? What new customer segments would Robin Hood develop in your organisation? How would Pierre Omidyar lead your not-for-profit organisation?

Google didn’t apply the business model from the software industry, yet their first product was nothing else than software packaged as a service. Airbnb.com didn’t use the business model of the hospitality industry, yet they offer hospitality services. Kickstarter.com didn’t use a banking or venture capital business model, yet they fund new endeavours all the time.

They all applied models from a different industry and combined them with a new approach that broke the dominant industry logic.

Understanding another industries business models is only the first step

Companies should always look beyond their traditional industry borders to learn. Could you learn from Nespresso’s direct sales model? Could you do the same and sacrificed some reach of your sales channels for a much more rich interaction with your customers?

What is innovation?

Innovation is a strange beast. Most people say innovation is about new technology or bringing new things to the market. Some might think of better processes.

Schumpeter went further and defined it as “The introduction of new goods (…), new methods of production (…), the opening of new markets (…), the conquest of new sources of supply (…) and the carrying out of a new organization of any industry”. (Source: Innovation Zen)

Innovation is about being different

However, what most of the time is missing, is that innovation has something to do about being positively different from your competitors. When every body in your industry is bringing out new products like in the TV set industry or in the PC industry, then this is no innovation. It is just daily business. You have to do it to survive. It’s a rat race.

Innovation is about being different in a way customers love.

However, successful innovation is different. Successful innovation is about being different.

Innovation is….

Innovation is when you just offer one telephone handset when your competitor offers 118 devices. Innovation is when you update your one phone only once a year a bit and a major overhaul comes every second year while your competitors bring new devices to the market every months. Innovation is when you see your “telephone” not as a device but as an access gate to whole new world. That’s Apple vs. Nokia. By the way Apple spent only a ninth on R&D than Nokia Continue reading Innovation is about being different

Framing the business model so it can be quickly but well understood by others is core. So, how do we do it? By Paul Hobcraft

You have come to end of a fairly long week. You have finally finished your Business Model Canvas. Finally you have a working hypothesis of something that is going to challenge some of the existing business models around. You should feel pleased; it took a lot of hard work to get to that point.

Laid out on one piece of paper is something that could have real business value yet although you can see where the dots connect, you begin to wonder if others will see the same compelling value, to invest in it, to back it, to simply support it and encourage you to continue.

Completing a business model and identifying its critical parts is only that first step, the hard part is getting it off the ‘drafting board’ and making it something tangible and potentially commercially viable for those around you to engage with.

What is the next step in executing this potential game changing business model

Each new business model needs a compelling story – a narrative..

We really need to learn how to craft a story, to tell the narrative around why your business model idea stands out and is worth other people’s time and consideration. This business model narrative along with your business model you are potentially better placed to test it, to talk about it, to validate it, to make it ‘sing for others’. You are out to get engagement and contributions everywhere, from everyone, as you tell the story, describe your potential new business model you gain from their reaction and improve your understanding of the real need for your idea. Continue reading Business Model Innovation and Story Telling: How to get the story right!

Ever since we have the Internet everything is abundant. So many information at your fingertip, billions of webpages, millions of articles on Wikipedia, millions of articles at Amazon and other hundred of thousands of specialized ecommerce shops with even more articles. But is more choice always better?

Abundance of choice is today the norm. That is due to the Internet. A physical shop is always limited by its physical space. The Internet knows no limit.

When I started my research on business model innovation in 1997 we were pretty much alone in this field. Actually, we had no word to describe the profound changes in industry structures due to the emergence of the Internet at that time. The term business model innovation just popped up in 2000 as a pure academic accident. I just added innovation to business model, a term that emerge in the 1990s and I secured the URL business-model-innovation. Today, Google gives me 190.000.000 hits for the term business model innovation. So you have abundance of sources of information about business model innovation. However, can you use them all?

More choice the better: The value proposition of the first wave of Internet ventures

Business Model Thinking is coming more and more mainstream. On Friday, I was at a workshop sponsored by the EU commission on Business Model Innovation and Policy Making. Here are my takeaways.

Business Model Innovation on the top of the agenda for policy makers

I’m very happy that the topic we started more than 15 years ago will be part of the future innovation policy of the EU. 15 years is a long time for me as a person, but as the business professor Christoph Zott is pointing out in science and policy making 15 years is a short time particularly when you want to introduce new units analysis to understand how firms outperform or create über-returns with (business model) innovation.

Policy making in need for innovation by xkcd

Business Model Innovators as outperformers

While we as entrepreneurs do not care much about measuring the impact of business model innovation on a societal level, the EU or the OECD, that also participated, want to measure each countries performance on business model innovation and then define policies to foster business model innovation on a governmental level.

Most papers presented at the workshop had a strong focus on the technocratic parts of a business model like Value Creation, Value Capture and Value Proposition but were missing the human side to business, the people who run a business, make the difference in innovation but are also the biggest impediments to change.

Pieter Perett and his team from the University of Applied Science Northwestern Switzerland, who organized the workshop, presented their findings that business model innovation make a strong impact on the long-term performance of firms. They use statistical data to identify business model innovators and they try to calculate if there is a über-return for these business model innovators.

Edward Giesen, Head of BMI at IBM, presented their study on business model innovation. They use a different method. Instead of measuring the impact of business model innovation from statistical data, they interview CEOs on the importance of business model innovation, and they see that companies that are consider themselves as business model innovators are outperforming traditional product or process innovators.

Christian Zott, who published one of the first works on business models in 2001 and is a strong advocate for business models, criticized from a scientist point of view the methods to measure the impact of business model innovation. His main point is that business models are often defined too broadly so it is difficult to understand where the real impact was in the business model.

I liked his criticism a lot from a scientist point of view and his focus on rigidity, however his proposal to focus only on the activities might be rigid but then the concept of business models looses its relevancy and its magic to see new boxes, entrepreneurs have never thought of as points of innovation like the revenue model, the value proposition or the Team & Value side of a business.

Where’s the beef?

Hans-Jörg Bullinger, former Head of the German Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, criticized that the studies are interesting from a scientific point of view, however, they do not help to overcome our technology bias. His call for action was that we need better tools to design business models for entrepreneurs. Of course, I loved his objection, since this is exactly, what we do with the upcoming tool box for entrepreneurs. Continue reading Business Model Innovation in the EU and beyond

Knowing where to start in designing a business model or simply just even trying to describe it to others can be difficult. You need to explain its value. The great advantage of explaining this through a business model canvas that looks for value constantly does help. This a guest post by Paul Hobcraft, an Agility Innovation Specialist.

fluidminds approach to exploring and explaining the business model does just that- it focuses on focusing the mind on the value within the business model.

The first value point is in the Value Proposition

Naturally we all look to the Value Proposition to explain the business model but like a car you should always look ‘under the hood’ to see the engine and what gives a car its performance. Equally you should stand back from the proposition and ‘take in’ all that makes this up. For a car it is the styling, the design, the promise and what or who is behind it. We look to buy on a given ‘promise of value’ and in having the benefits explained it allows us to believe and ‘see’ the potentials. A business model, well designed and described, does just that. It confirms the (new or existing) value that makes up the new business model.

The value proposition shapes much; it identifies and defines where this business model is providing new offerings that advance on existing benefits to customers. The fluidminds business model canvas seeks out the customer and the customer benefit- it is looking to provide value by identifying where there is a clear fresh, new proposition.

We do have to recognize a value proposition is not just looking to resolve the known jobs-to-be-done. In many new business models can be bringing together often fragmented parts of existing offerings and combining them in new ways, or deliberately and completely disrupting existing businesses through adapting new insight, technology advancements or understanding, into new business models. We only need to think of Apple and how it combined different technologies, revolutionary design and applied new materials into stunning, game changing products that changed our thinking of the actual jobs we thought about into totally different ones, which totally undermined existing business value or perceptions. Those become game changers. Continue reading Knowing the Value within your Business Model is vital